Smith at the 1933 World’s Fair

In 1933, the city of Chicago celebrated its own 100th birthday by hosting a World’s Fair dubbed “A Century of Progress.” The exposition was designed to be forward-looking and featured Streamline Moderne architecture and other Art Deco design. Despite its occurrence during the Great Depression, the Fair captured the hearts and minds of people from all around the world. Smith hosted a booth at the Fair, and a Smith Alumnae Quarterly from 1933 explains how it all came together. First, Smith acknowledged that many of its talented students and alumnae came from the Chicago area, and there was a strong local club that could assist with booth hosting and other logistics. Second, participating in the Fair provided a wonderful public relations opportunity, as the College would be able to distribute information to a wide audience; over 39 million people attended the Fair over its two-year run. Third, the Fair provided a wonderful opportunity for students and alumnae to visit the booth and support outreach efforts. (Smithies who needed housing in Chicago could stay at the South Michigan Ave. Y.W.C.A., which set aside a floor of rooms for college and university women visiting the Fair.)

The booth was inside the Hall of Social Science, at the corner of a busy pedestrian intersection. A Smith senior from Portland, Oregon, Virginia Gilbert ’33, designed the booth. The mural, which depicted campus scenes and students in action, was painted by Professor Oliver Larkin, head of Smith’s art department. A description in the May, 1933 Smith Alumnae Quarterly indicates that the mural’s color scheme “is carried out in very intense colors, the deep blues and greens of the background being balanced by the violet, green-blue, orange, and vermilion tones of the figures.” Assistant Professor of Architecture Karl Putnam assisted in the booth plans; construction of the booth fell to Mr. Franklin King, Smith’s Superintendent of Buildings & Grounds at the time. The booth featured a slide show of campus activities projected by a balopticon, which was an early Bausch and Lomb slide/opaque projector. 

Postscript: After graduation, Virginia Gilbert (1911-1996) returned to Oregon, where she worked with Margery Hoffman Smith on the interior decoration of the then-new Timberland Lodge on Mount Hood. (Exterior shots of that lodge appear as The Overlook Hotel in the movie, The Shining.)  She also married, and raised four children. Virginia’s obituary in the spring 1997 Smith Alumnae Quarterly describes her as “a loyal member of the class [who] crossed the country to attend our 60th Reunion.” Professor Oliver Larkin (1896-1970) taught at Smith for forty years. His combined interest in art and American Studies culminated in a five-year project, his book entitled Art and Life in America (1949), which won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1950. Franklin King served as Smith’s Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds for fifty years (1886-1936) and was beloved by all members of the community. His name lives on in the Quad house named after him.

For more information about Smith’s presence at the Century of Progress, see articles in Smith Alumnae Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 3 (May, 1933). For general information about Chicago’s 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition, see this video from The Chicago Tribune, or this one that features archival film footage of the Fair. (And there’s always Wikipedia and the Smith Archives as starting points for further study.)

–Nan Smith Stifel ’77